RUSSIA. 



611 



ernment. On Feb. 22 students assembled with 

 red flags in front of the university hall at Mos- 

 cow and when ordered to disperse proceeded to 

 wreck the buildings. A large number of women 

 students participated in all these demonstrations, 

 and these were beaten with Cossack whips as 

 mercilessly as the men. On March 2 another 

 riot took place in Moscow. Students barricaded 

 themselves against the police and proclaimed the 

 intention of setting up a republic. There were 

 537 students of the university, 111 students of 

 other institutions, and 34 other persons of both 

 sexes sentenced by administrative order for riot- 

 ing or political disaffection. Of these, 95 were 

 banished to eastern Siberia for periods varying 

 from two to five years and 567 were sentenced to 

 from three to six months' imprisonment in Arch- 

 angel. After one or two large gangs of student 

 prisoners had broken out of the jails in which 

 they were confined it was decided to distribute 

 these latter in the prisons of various towns 

 throughout the empire. Some of them refused 

 to eat in jail unless they were assured of a legal 

 trial. 'The American consul received an appeal 

 purporting to come from mothers and sisters of 

 the students begging him, as the representative 

 of a free nation, to make known to the Czar 

 the cruelties to which they were subjected. A 

 woman teacher named Allart fired a pistol at Col. 

 Trepoff, chief of the Moscow police, and a few 

 days later another attempt was made to assas- 

 sinate him. In Kharkoff and Odessa student 

 riots took place, and everywhere the working 

 men had a part. In St. Petersburg 70 students and 

 200 workmen were arrested. The universities and 

 high schools were closed, even the Warsaw Poly- 

 technic after meetings of the students took place. 

 From Kieff 80 students were rusticated in differ- 

 ent villages, and others from Kharkoff were treat- 

 ed in the same manner. Strikes and labor riots 

 occurred in all the industrial centers " of south 

 Russia, in the mining districts of the Urals, even 

 in various places in Siberia. In Yekaterinoslav 

 and other towns strikers were shot down by sol- 

 diers. At Tula the soldiers refused to fire upon 

 strikers. At Moscow, where the officers received 

 letters appealing to them not to order the troops 

 to use firearms or cold steel against their broth- 

 ers, a regiment of grenadiers showed such a 

 mutinous spirit that it was withdrawn. In St. 

 Petersburg a battalion of marine infantry would 

 not fire upon the crowd when ordered to do so 

 three times, and several officers were arrested for 

 connivance with the revolutionists. At Rostoff 

 a political demonstration was allowed to pass 

 peacefully because the police were too weak to 

 successfully interfere. At Poltava and other 

 quiet country towns the banished students scat- 

 tered incendiary proclamations, cheered for Tol- 

 stoi, and shouted confusion to despotism. The 

 police issued warnings in the cities that any per- 

 son found in the streets after they were ordered 

 to be cleared would be liable to imprisonment. 

 On March 16, a few days after the university 

 was reopened, a revolutionary demonstration 

 took place in St. Petersburg in favor of freedom 

 of association and assemblage, free speech, 

 a free press, and personal liberty. Committees 

 of students and of working men arranged 

 the affair, distributing and posting on walls 

 thousands of proclamations and sending notices 

 to the officers of the garrison begging them not 

 to order the soldiers to fire upon the unarmed 

 people whose only object was to make the Gov- 

 ernment acquainted with their demands by a 

 peaceful demonstration. The demonstrants raised 

 their red flags and uttered their revolutionary 



cries only to be struck with the bare swords of 

 the police and the knouts of Cossack horsemen, 

 but none of them offered any resistance. Maxim 

 Gorki, who was interned in the Crimea because 

 he signed the protest of Russian authors against 

 the brutality of the police in dealing with the 

 students' demonstration of the previous year, 

 was elected a member of the Imperial Academy 

 of Sciences, but the Government annulled his elec- 

 tion. On April 15 the Minister of the Interior 

 was murdered by a student who pretended he 

 was a messenger of the Grand-Duke Serge. He- 

 was the agent of a revolutionary society in- 

 structed to kill either M. Sipiagin or M. Pobe- 

 donostseff, whichever appeared first at the minis- 

 terial palace to attend a Cabinet meeting. Viat- 

 sheshaff Gonstantinovich de Plehwe, Minister for 

 Finland, was appointed on April 17 to succeed 

 M. Sipiagin. Exiled Russians in Paris were dis- 

 covered by the secret police to have had cog- 

 nizance of the intended murder of one or both of 

 the ministers, who represented reaction and rig- 

 orous repression in the Russian Cabinet. On 

 April 20 Gen. Vannovsky, who was appointed 

 Minister of Education after the murder of M. 

 Bogolepoff, resigned his post, his proposed reform 

 of secondary education by giving studies a mod- 

 ern scientific direction and diminishing the time 

 spent on the classical languages and literature 

 having been condemned or postponed in conse- 

 quence of the last revolutionary manifestations 

 among the students. Assistant-Minister Zenger 

 was immediately appointed Acting Minister of 

 Public Instruction. The Ministry of War was 

 not deterred by the prevalence of the revolution- 

 ary spirit from its efforts to raise the standard of 

 general intelligence in the ranks of the army, 

 primarily impelled thereto by the lack of an ade- 

 quate supply of non-commissioned officers. It is 

 essential that these should possess an elementary 

 education, and those taken from the town popu- 

 lation and the manufacturing districts on account 

 of their possessing such education were found 

 untrustworthy. Hence it was decided to enlarge 

 the scheme of instructing the conscripts in the 

 army, making instruction, in reading and writing 

 obligatory for all recruits in the infantry and 

 artillery and for 10 or 12 recruits selected from 

 each cavalry squadron. In May an attempt was 

 made by a Jew to kill Gen. von Wahl, Governor 

 of Vilna, for the flogging of persons who had 

 taken part in seditious demonstrations. Like 

 the other murderous deeds, this also was decreed 

 by a central revolutionary committee and was 

 preceded by threatening letters. Similar threats 

 of murder were sent to M. Pobedonostseff, whose 

 life was attempted in 1901, to M. de Plehwe, and 

 to other high officials. The political assassins 

 were tried by court-martial and executed. Some 

 who were chosen by lot to execute the threatened 

 vengeance of the revolutionary societies com- 

 mitted suicide rather than carry out the crimes. 

 On Aug. 11 Prince Obolenski, Governor of Khar- 

 koff, was wounded by an assassin and his life was 

 saved by a lady conversing with him who struck 

 aside the pistol. M. de Plehwe found that during 

 the two years and a half that M. Sipiagin was 

 in office 60,000 persons had been exiled from the 

 principal cities, including workmen sent back 

 to their villages. He found also that these ex- 

 iles had created new centers of disaffection and 

 that the banishment of men of intellect and in- 

 dependence of thought had an effect on the com- 

 munity contrary to the one intended. Therefore 

 he let it be known to many professors, lawyers, 

 doctors, and writers who had been expelled that 

 he would consider petitions for a reconsideration 



